While studying or researching in the field of psychology, you may be asked to create and present a research poster. In this guide, we'll go over how to make such a poster.
Before even beginning to actually build your poster, it is important to keep in mind what sort of content your poster will actually cover. Generally, research posters will cover one of the following:
Independent research
Research proposal
Literature review
Each of these poster types will require different material and content, so be sure to know what you’re creating.
For a poster covering your own independent research, you will need to gather your data and conclusions, your tests, measures, and methods (with appropriate citations if necessary), and relevant background information on your topic
For a poster presenting a research proposal, you will need to gather necessary background information on the subject you are proposing to research, the tests, measures, and methods you would intend on using, and explanations for the usability and viability of your proposed research.
When it comes to finding tests and measures, be sure to use the subject guides, available on the SPU library website, to locate appropriate ones and determine which are available for your use. The general psychology guide will generally be your best place to start searching for them.
You can also access the page by following these steps:
1. Navigate to the subject guides tab on the SPU library website homepage
2. After selecting the subject guides icon, scroll down to the psychology heading, click on it, and then select "Psychology" from the bulleted options.
3. Once you are in the subject guide for psychology, there will be a menu on the left side of the screen. From the options, select "Find tests and measures".
4. From there, make use of the databases, tutorials, and other resources to find appropriate tests and measures.
For a literature review, you will first choose a topic to research and then begin compiling research related to that topic. Make use of databases, especially those to which you have access provided by SPU. To access SPU's psychology databases (and SPU's databases in general), you can follow these steps:
1. On the SPU library homepage, select the "Article and research databases" icon.
2. This will take you to SPU's A-Z databases page. To search for psychology databases specifically, change the selection in the top menu from "all subjects" to "psychology".
3. From there, you can browse through and access the psychology databases which SPU has access to.
Google Scholar is also a fantastic place to search for good articles and perspectives.
It may be very helpful for you to put the sources you find together in an annotated bibliography. Create a document with all the good sources you have found listed along with a brief description of the source and how you intend to use the information contained within your poster. Pay extra close attention to the usage portion of this, as even otherwise amazing sources may simply not be useful for your purposes. This does not mean that you should dismiss a good source if it disagrees with a point you are trying to make, but that even a genuinely otherwise incredible source may simply not contain information relevant to what you’re discussing.
For example, if your poster is about stress-related disorders, an amazing article on personality disorders may just not be useful. If the article connects stress-related disorders and personality disorders in a unique and interesting way then it may be very useful, but if the only connection you can find that it has to stress-related disorders is that it talks about the stress life with a personality can cause, then that may be too tenuous of a connection. Use your best judgement and by all means, do not be afraid to try to connect ideas in new and interesting ways. However, if you struggle to articulate the connection between an article and your topic, then your poster’s audience will almost certainly struggle even more.
Once you have your content, references, and ideas gathered, it’s time to start putting it together. Every research poster will look a little different, and again, the space and audience you are presenting for may require a specific format, but there are some basic formatting elements, which will remain the same across the board.
First, the top of your poster should be where the title goes, preferably in nice, big, bolded, letters. Underneath this is where your name and the names of anyone else who worked on the poster go. Names should be in the format of last name, first and second initials. Names should also be listed in alphabetical order. For example, a poster created by a group with the names John W Smith, Jane F Doe, and Carl A Jones would see the names listed as Doe, J.F., Jones, C.A., Smith, J.W., written underneath the title in slightly smaller print.
Another consistent formatting element of a good research poster is having each section have a header with the name of the section, and then having the section below organized neatly, with bullet points often being very handy. A research poster is meant to be a handy, easy to follow overview of a subject, not a research paper in poster form. Make it clear what information is where, and then have that information synthesized into easy chunks. Be specific and clear, but not overly verbose. The poster format limits space available and what space is available runs out fast if you try to write a thousand words for each section.
A final formatting element which should be present on all posters is having your team’s contact information at the bottom. For SPU purposes, this will usually just be your SPU email addresses, but other contact information may be included, such as links to social media accounts the poster is affiliated with in a meaningful capacity (genuine academic social media, not just your personal Instagram page), or even URLs for more content you’ve created to supplement or otherwise accompany the poster. If you have written a paper going deeper into your research findings, feel free to include that URL at the bottom of your poster.
Please note that your sources should not be listed on your poster. Some citations may be called for in specific areas, but your poster will not require a sources cited section. This will come later when you get to the handout.
The first piece of content on your poster should be some form of introduction. You may use an abstract if you wish or if such is required for your project. Generally, though, you will need to include some sort of section at the beginning of your poster which gives background on the topic you’re researching, why it matters, and gives some idea of where the rest of your poster content is headed to. You can do all this under one header or break it up under multiple. Just be sure to keep it neat and orderly. Too many headers with too little content under each can detract from the readability, while too much content jammed under one of the very first headers can lose your audience’s interest. You have to figure out what works best for your poster.
The only hard and fast rules (unless noted as otherwise in instructions for your presentation) are that your poster needs a way to introduce itself that allows your audience to follow and understand the rest of the poster, and that your introduction should be relatively brief. Remember, the poster format inherently limits the amount of space you have to work with, and the main part of your research poster should be your research, so be sure to not make a terribly long introduction.
For posters presenting your research or your research proposal, you will also need a section covering your methods, tests, and measures used. This section should also not be overly long but should provide a complete and accurate overview of what you used or propose using to research your topic, and how those things have been or will be used. Also, if you used research methods or test and measures devised and designed by outside parties, you will need to credit those outside parties on your poster in this section. Give the name of the test, cite where and who you got it from (make sure you are only using tests and measures you have permission to use!), and provide a brief description of what it is and how it works.
Now comes the real meat of the research poster: your main findings section. This is where you lay out all of what your research revealed to you and should constitute the bulk of your poster. Some poster formats will even have you create a section of larger text that takes up most of your poster for your findings, with the other information being placed on side panels of sorts on the left and right. Check with the instructor or conference you are designing this poster for to see if this is a formatting requirement. Bullet points and small, bolded subheadings can help you keep this section organized if you have a lot of information to cover in the main findings section. Graphs, graphics, and charts also help your poster to pop and help to convey information nicely to your audience. These can be ones you’ve created yourself or ones you’ve found elsewhere, used with permission, and cited properly.
Remember, the research poster format is meant to be easily readable, so don’t just make a main findings section which is nothing but lots and lots of same-size text. Also, avoid quotes as much as possible. Quotes take up a lot of very valuable space and are generally considered poor form for a research poster. You can draw from your sources of course, but direct quotations are frowned upon. For a research proposal, this section will instead go into detail into about the application of your chosen tests and measures, elaborate on the usage of your methods, and give a look into how these methods, tests, and measures give and elucidate information on your subject, with special attention being paid to what knowledge has already been found in the same area using similar methodology and how your particular methodology will bring unique, useable results out.
The last section of your poster should be a conclusion, summing things up and providing your final thoughts on the results/findings of your research. While you should have touched briefly on what your findings meant as you were introducing and covering them, this is the time to fully and decisively state what you feel your results/findings mean/show. This section is the conclusion both because it is the concluding portion of your poster’s content and because it states your conclusions on and from your findings. Provide an analysis of your findings and state what they mean. You may even leave your audience with an important idea or takeaway at the end or even suggest an action or change of some sort for the future. Earlier on in your poster, you should have explained why what your research would elucidate would be important. Here, you show how it did indeed turn out to be important, or, in the case of a research proposal, show how it should turn out to be important.
Unless other instructions or specifications are given you will likely create one of two types of handout to pass out to interested audience members when you are presenting your poster.
Your first option is to print a smaller version of your poster (about one standard page) which includes your works cited page on the obverse. Your handout will generally be where your references page goes, rather than on the poster itself. If you choose to have your handout be a miniaturized version of your poster, you will also need to be certain that all content on your poster remains legible and easily visible at the reduced size.
The other common option for poster handouts is to write a short essay piece which goes into greater depth on your subject and which can be a bit more text heavy than your actual poster. This should still be a relatively brief piece of writing though, as you do not want to overwhelm anyone or cause them to lose interest. You also need to include your sources cited on this type of handout as well.
Before printing your poster, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, be sure to check the size requirements provided by either your instructor or the conference you're presenting at for your physical poster. Also remember that black and white printing will likely be far cheaper than printing in color, with black and white costing usually around $5-15 for a regular-size poster while color can cost upwards of $35, so your poster will probably be in black and white.
However, this means that any graphics or charts you have which were originally in color will then be in black and white as well. If your visuals rely heavily on color and will become unintelligible without it, then you have to address this if you print in black and white. You can replace such visuals, either with other ones you can find and freely use or with ones you create yourself, or you may attempt to recolor them on your poster after printing. Markers, pens, and colored pencils may all prove handy and helpful for this task. A word of warning, though, is that not all visuals will be easily recolored when printed in black and white, so be careful and be prepared to get creative. Using different shapes and fills to denote things may work as an alternative to color, but you may also come up with your own methods.
Don't forget to check the requirements for your handout as well, although these may be looser. If no requirements are specified, a single page on cardstock is generally a good way to go. As mentioned above, this handout can either be a smaller version of your poster with sources cited on the back, or a short essay explanation which elaborates on your poster subject and which also gives sources cited. The exact number of handouts you make will depend on the size of the class or conference you are presenting your poster to.
Both the poster and handouts can be printed out at a local print shop, but the handouts can also be printed off of an SPU printer with relative ease. Bring your own cardstock and make sure you have the proper front and back formatting applied and then utilize web print to print out your handouts. You may also be tempted to attempt to print out your poster as individual sheets of paper and then put them together on a backing of some sort. However, this method is messy and not very aesthetically pleasing, and in many cases your instructor or the conference you are attending will specifically require a professionally printed poster, so this method is generally best avoided.
Things to do when presenting:
Go over your poster and your related notes after you finish your poster and practice explaining how your work comes together and what things mean. This should already be explained on your poster, but clarifying questions will be among the most common you receive so it’s important to know how to answer them. People may also be curious about your research process, or in the case of a research proposal, about your process of coming up with and crafting the proposed research. The information that informs your poster does not become any less important once your poster is completed and created. If your poster gets your audience interested in your subject, they will also likely be interested in the process and the background.
As you present your poster you will also need to make sure that you know the material described and covered on your poster very well. You are not just reading off the poster; you are using the poster as a jumping-off point and visual aid for your presenting the subject matter of the poster. Be prepared to answer questions that relate to your subject, but which are not directly addressed on your poster. Remember, a good poster should generate interest and curiosity, so be prepared for inquisitive audience members.
Again, there should already be some information on this on your poster in your introduction/background section, but your entire process will not be on your poster. Neither should you give a complete and comprehensive background on the subject on your poster. Instead, be prepared to answer relevant questions on the background of your subject. Answer any and all questions with answers that draw on your research, your poster content, and the background information on your subject.
There are a couple of SPU supported research poster templates available for your use. You may make a poster based on the template found at this link, https://s-ink.org/betterposter-poster-template, and you may also use the poster template attached as a PDF.
The linked poster template is one which has been pushed for recently and may be required or strongly recommended by the rules of your conference or class. However, not every situation will require a poster of that exact format, so if the rules do not specify an exact desired format, and you feel more comfortable making something like the other template, you will usually be allowed to do so.
Be sure to double-check all instructions and rules, and then create whatever works best and is most comfortable for you and your research purposes.
This site also features a number of free, downloadable templates, as well as further poster tips and tricks that you may find useful.